Wake

by Abria Mattina

  What a letdown.

  I’m staring at the fridge, trying to figure out what to make for dinner without actually thinking, when the phone rings. Maybe it’s him. I snatch the handset off the wall.

  “Hello?”

  “You sound excited,” Luke says, and chuckles warmly. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Just making dinner.”

  “Come here after,” he says. “We haven’t hung out all week.”

  “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “That sounds pretty freaking fantastic. I’ve had a shit week.” I don’t even bother to eat before I go over to the Thorpe house. Luke is waiting on the porch for me when I get there. He picks me up in a hug and asks what would make me feel better.

  “A distraction. Anything.”

  “It’s a nice day for a hike,” he offers. He doesn’t have to say anything else to sell me on the idea. I enjoy these tranquil places out in the wilderness. Luke and I spend the evening exploring the rocks around his camping cave. We find birds’ nests in the crags and pass a family of sleeping raccoons. The runt of the litter is awake and blinks at us with something like bewilderment.

  Eventually, the worries of my day slip away and I’m lightened by easy pleasures and good company.

  When we get tired of walking we head back to the cave to sit on the rocks. Luke puts his hands on my waist and boosts me up.

  “You’re like a little doll,” he says. “You weigh next to nothing.” When he climbs up next to me he puts an arm around my back. “What was so hard this week?” Luke touches my hair, combing his fingers through it. I consider telling him what really happened, but I couldn’t do that without telling him about my sister. I don’t think I ever will tell him that particular part of my history. That would complicate things, and Luke is a very simple sort of friend. He knows the new Willa—the one who isn’t a fuckup.

  “Just…a little drama with a friend.”

  “Girl drama?” Luke guesses.

  “No, just some stuff with my project partner.” That’s the only way to describe our relationship now—just two students assigned to work together for an hour a day.

  Luke squeezes me gently. I lay my head on his shoulder because it feels good, and he kisses my hair.

  “You’ve got to stop that, you know.”

  “What?”

  “All this affection. Our families are going to start thinking that there’s something going on between us.”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  “Them thinking it? Or something going on?”

  “The second one.” He tries to kiss me and I turn my head so he gets my cheek.

  “We’re friends. That’s it. We talked about this.”

  “Is it the age difference? You know that technically we’re only a year and four months apart. It’s not much—”

  “I don’t date.”

  “What, never?” He laughs softly like I’m joking.

  “Isn’t it enough to just be my friend?” I can’t help sighing. I’ll have few friends left if Jem tells people about me.

  “It is,” Luke assures me. He hugs me closer and adds, “For now.”

  “No.” I pull away. “There’s never going to be any more.”

  “You say that now, but—”

  “I say it because I mean it. I’ll always mean it. You’re like my brother, okay? Just drop it.”

  “You’re upset.” Luke smoothes my hair. Is he saying that to discredit my refusal? “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “I’m gonna go home.” I stand up and walk away.

  “Willa!” Luke calls after me. I don’t stop or turn back. Luke jogs after me and grabs my arm. “You want to go back to the house? To the beach? What will make you feel better?”

  I think Luke is the only person left who would actually ask me that question.

  “Got any weed?”

  *

  I step out of my car, disappointed and sober, to find Elise on my porch. She sits on the stoop, tapping her hands on her knees. Her bike lies on its side on the front lawn.

  “Are you okay?” she says, pointing to my neck. Turns out that Luke is mind-numbingly straightedge when it comes to substances, but he was willing to help me take my mind of reality in the back seat of the car for an hour. If he left a hickey, I’ll kill him.

  “Bug bite.”

  “Oh.”

  “So what are you doing here?” I reach into my purse for my house key. Elise grabs me by the back of my jacket and makes me face her. She looks so perplexed.

  “I was worried about you. Jem’s being more of a jerk than usual. I thought maybe you guys had a fight, but he’s not saying anything.”

  “And you care because…?”

  “Because you’re good for him. If you had a fight or whatever, I’m sure it can be resolved.”

  I can’t withhold a skeptical snort. “I doubt it.”

  “Try, please,” she says in a plying voice. She has no right to ask me that, ignorant as she is of the details. He cut me out, not the other way around. He was the one who insisted that I don’t know what real suffering is.

  “You want to carry some peace-making message to him?”

  “If it’ll help,” she agrees.

  “Okay. Tell him he’s an absolute bastard—a scrawny, ugly, bald motherfucker who is going to die cold and alone. He’ll know what it means.” I step inside and slam the front door behind me.

  It takes a long, hot shower to get rid of the scent of Luke and pine. I still feel slightly dirty afterwards. Frank left some takeout pizza in the fridge for me, but I can’t choke down more than a few bites. It’s about half-past when my phone buzzes with a new text message.

  Was it absolutely necessary to make my sister cry?

  Tell her to keep her nose out of it, then.

  It’s none of Elise’s business what goes on between Jem and I. It’s not her responsibility to fight his battles for him, either, or to negotiate peace like we’re kindergartners fighting over a toy.

  I don’t hear from anyone until late that night, when I get another text from Jem.

  I told her about you.

  The five short words make my blood run cold. I’m done. Life as I know it in Smiths Falls is over. I should never have trusted him.

  You don’t deserve friends, I tell him.

  I drop my pillow over my head and try not to scream. This is how it starts. It might take a day or two, but soon everyone will know. I’ll have to explain, and no one will accept—if they even let me explain to begin with. It’ll be a lonely two months until school is out, and then an even lonelier summer. My catch-up semesters will be quiet ones. I’ll be the outcast and he’ll be back to normal by then—he’ll have a voice and friends and not a shred of pity for me.

  I might as well just give up now and move back to St. John’s.

  He sends me: I can’t believe I ever liked you.

  It’s not necessary to tell me what a monster I am.

  I’ve been vilified by everyone I know already. I got the message, loud and clear, that I’m a bad person. The fact that I tried to be better by moving to Smiths Falls is irrelevant.

  Ask Hudson to assign you a new partner tomorrow, I tell him. Don’t put yourself through the trouble of having to acknowledge me.

  I’ll do that.

  And there it is. All alone. Again.

  Friday

  I don’t go to school. I can’t take it. I tell Frank I have a migraine and he obliges me by calling the school to justify my absence. At first I think he actually believes me, because I spend the day in bed, drifting between sleeping and waking. I have no appetite. The light hurts my head. I can’t say for sure where it hurts. In the afternoon Frank offers to take me to see a doctor, but I’m not fooled. He doesn’t mean he’ll take me to the family doctor for a checkup and some painkillers, because he doesn’t believe my migraine excuse. He means he’ll take me to a shrink to find out if this is an encore performance of clinical depression
.

  “I told you not to hang out with that kid,” he says when I refuse. “I warned you, and now look at yourself. It’s just like before—”

  “I was overmedicated,” I say loudly. “Not that you’d know; you weren’t there. It had nothing to do with Tessa or with anything, and this has nothing to do with Jem.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me. Doug said you told Luke you’d had a bad week—normal people don’t get so blue they can’t get out of bed after a bad week.”

  He doesn’t know the kind of bad week I’ve had. Two days and I actually miss Jem’s snark. His negativity took the edge off my misanthropy.

  “You and Doug gossip like sixteen-year-old girls,” I complain. I throw off my blanket and get out of bed. “There, I’m up. You happy?”

  “Fine, I’m happy,” Frank retorts. “Do something with your afternoon.”

  “I’m going out.”

  “Oh no you’re not.”

  “You just told me to do something.”

  “Around the house! Take it easy for the day.”

  “You don’t even know where I’m going.” Neither do I, but that’s beside the point. I grab a pair of shoes off my floor and my keys off the dresser. Frank follows me all the way to the front door, arguing with me to stay indoors and take a day to rest.

  I have no idea where I’m going, unwashed and dressed in sweats. I end up parked in front of Tim Hortons, watching the other cars go by. I have no energy, so I recline the driver’s seat and stare at the ceiling. It’s almost four—the Group session at the rec center in St. John’s is just about to start. Dollars to donuts, Ray is still there and hating every minute of it.

  I suppose that’s something I could do here, if word gets around that I’m a homicidal maniac: find a group therapy resource (it would appease Frank) and get my human contact from the screwballs there. I would probably have to drive to a larger town like Ottawa or Brockville to find a youth group, but beggars can’t be choosers. Then I wonder if I really want to get involved with more people like Steve, and the idea loses its appeal.

  I get home just after sunset. Frank grills me about where I’ve been. He doesn’t buy that I’ve been sitting in my car in a parking lot all afternoon, doing nothing.

  “You could have sat around and done nothing here,” he says. “You didn’t have to worry me.”

  “No one asked you to worry.” I open the fridge and look for something to eat, even though I’m not hungry.

  “I’m your brother. It’s in the job description.” Frank offers to make me something to eat, but I don’t feel like eating burnt food tonight. I just pour myself a bowl of cereal and sit there with a blank look, chewing it slowly. It tastes like sand.

  As soon as Frank leaves the kitchen I check the call history on the phone. He called Mom’s cell not a full hour ago. Any day now they’re going to gang up on me; I know it.

  *

  I stare at my computer screen, baffled by the e-card my mother sent me. We’re long past the ability to communicate effectively about serious matters and emotions, so instead I get an email with I a silly picture of a kitten in a cowboy hat telling me to cheer up. I hate people who put clothes on their pets. The image of the kitten blinks its big blue eyes and stiffly wags its tail. I think I might vomit.

  The need to erase the kitten sends me on a deleting binge. I purge my inbox, scrapping all the correspondence (what little there is) from people back home. I haven’t gone out of my way to get in touch with anyone from St. John’s since I moved here. A few people sent emails asking where I was—those were the people who I didn’t care enough about to say goodbye to before I left the province. I’m in the process of deleting those when I come across the last email I received from Steve.

  I didn’t say goodbye to him in person, either. I couldn’t stand to. I sent him an email after I was already settled in Smiths Falls, making it clear that I wasn’t coming back to St. John’s or to Group. His reply was short and smarmy, just like him:

  That’s a shame. I’ll miss you, Baby Girl. Stay strong.

  Steve always was a nervy fucker. It was a real shit thing to call me Baby Girl after two years. You could always tell which of the girls in Group he was fucking at any given time by the condescending nickname he bestowed on us all. I think it was how he kept from calling each of us by the wrong name at an inopportune moment. I never outright told him to piss off when he said it, but I would always tell him that he wasn’t my dad. Steve would just laugh it off and say ‘Thank God.’ He didn’t mean it in an advantageous way, either. He meant that in a, ‘you’re so screwed up I’m glad you’re not my kid’ kind of way.

  As I delete the email I say a little prayer to whoever’s listening that he breaks both arms simultaneously.

  Saturday

  Vacuuming the carpets on all four floors of the Elwood Arms B&B makes the morning go by at a reasonable pace. It keeps my hands busy and I’m so focused on getting everything perfectly clean that I don’t have time to dwell on Jem—much. When I’m done vacuuming I spend two hours washing and pressing sheets.

  “Come out front for a while,” Chris says when he sees me folding sheets. I try to decline, but he insists. When we get to the counter I find out he just wanted help sorting through credit receipts by date. It’s a boring task, but it has the same way of keeping both hands and mind busy, so I do it without complaint.

  “How come you weren’t at school yesterday?”

  “Food poisoning.”

  He expresses his sympathy and says he’s glad I felt well enough to come in today. “Work is pretty boring when you’re the only one here.”

  “I’m gonna go make up the beds.”

  I take the basket of clean sheets up to the second floor. There are nine suites in the house, each with a queen bed or larger. I bend down to pick up the first sheets off the basket and Chris puts his hand on my back. I jump at the sensation—I didn’t realize he followed me from the lobby.

  “Easy,” he tells me with a smile. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” His hand is still on my back. “Let me help you with that.” Chris goes to take the fitted sheet from me, deliberately touching my hand in the process.

  “Have you slept with Paige yet?”

  My question surprises him. “What?”

  “Have you slept with her yet?”

  Chris gives me this uneasy look, like he isn’t sure if I’m playing a joke on him or not. I take the sheet from him and throw it across the bare mattress.

  “All this on-again-off-again, fighting in public, making each other jealous, making out in the hallway…is she so back-and-forth and spiteful because she gave you something she wishes she hadn’t?”

  Chris does one hell of a goldfish impersonation. “That’s, uh…private.” He hasn’t slept with her. Chris smiles awkwardly and gestures to the door. “I’ll leave you to it.” He heads back to the front counter. I almost wish Jem were here just so I could say, See? I don’t need pepper spray to get Elwood to leave me alone. A sharp tongue does the trick.

  *

  Mom calls that night under the pretense of catching up with me. I know she just wants to make sure I’m not causing more trouble. She keeps me on the phone for an hour, talking about work and the neighbors and Newfoundland weather. She asks me about school and work, and I give her the highlights. Mom surprises me by remembering most of my new friends’ names.

  “What about Jem?” she asks. “You haven’t mentioned him yet.” I bet she was waiting for me to say something about Jem; to prove whether Frank was right or wrong about what a bad idea it is for me to hang out with him.

  “We haven’t spoken much this week.”

  “Why not?”

  My first instinct is to lie, because that’s what I always do when uncomfortable questions arise, but this is my Mom. She already knows who I am at my worst.

  “I told him about St. John’s.”

  Mom is silent for three whole seconds. The tension is simply delicious.

  “What exactly do y
ou mean by that?” she asks slowly. She sounds like a counselor trying to talk someone down from their ledge.

  “I told him about Tessa, and the psych detainment, and the group therapy. And about getting messed up on antidepressants and planning to kill myself. Not the whole story, exactly.”

  “And why would you do a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know. I trusted him.”

  “You wanted a clean break,” she says. “You had one there. You haven’t known him that long and you trusted him with damaging information.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “Willa, you didn’t handle it well last time.”

  “This is different.”

  “How?”

  I take a deep breath through my nose, but it does nothing to help my patience. “Shortage of tall buildings?”

  “Put Frank on the phone.”

  I hand the phone over to Frank and disappear to the second floor. I don’t want to hear what they have to say about me. As I sit there doing nothing my phone buzzes. Guess who has to make my bad day even worse?

  Do you still have my Nightdodger CD?

  You’re not getting that back. I’ll keep it just to spite him.

  Bring it to school tomorrow.

  Make me.

  I knew it was going to cost me to be Jem’s friend. Why shouldn’t I get a free CD out of the deal? In exchange for two paranoid parents, an overprotective brother, one dead heart, months of soup, my reputation and my sanity, of course.

  You’re being a child,

  You’re being a prick.

  From what I can hear of Frank’s half of the phone conversation, he and Mom are getting upset. I turn on my iPod and crank the volume to block them out.

  The first track is from Spirited. Stupid Shuffle.